BAY CITY, MI — Film crews toured Bay and Midland counties this week capturing b-roll to include in a $2.5 million Pure Michigan national advertising campaign aimed at introducing the Great Lakes Bay Region to the entire country.

Annette Rummel, president and chief executive officer of the Great Lakes Bay Regional Convention & Visitors Bureau, said this is “the first time we have been able to achieve the national status on any advertising campaign.”

“We've had individual ads run nationally, mostly print ads, but never a TV commercial and never an entire series,” Rummel said.

The Pure Michigan Great Lakes Bay Region advertising campaign, to include print, radio and a 30-second TV commercial, is to debut nationally in the spring and summer of 2014. Travel Michigan, in cooperation with the Great Lakes Bay Regional
CVB, is producing the Great Lakes Bay Pure
Michigan TV commercial.

This week, crews captured b-roll footage, or supplemental footage, in Bay and Midland counties to use in conjunction with footage previously captured in Saginaw County, Rummel said. This week’s tour included the region’s gardens and waterfront areas, golf courses and iconic locations, such the Tridge in Midland, the Marshall M. Fredericks Sculpture Museum at Saginaw Valley State University, and antique shops in downtown Bay City.

Bay City's Americana Co. Antiques, 912 N. Water St., was among the stops on Tuesday, June 25.

The antique store, open since 1999, is packed from floor to ceiling with books, framed art, signs, dolls, furniture, clothing, jewelry and more, offered by 24 vendors.

“The iconic things. Things that conjure up good memories, good times,” said store owner Howie Diefenbach.

He said the film crew took some of his merchandise out onto the sidewalk in front of his store Tuesday.

“It was more or less kind of a background that they were looking to create,” he said of the scene. “… A market or street fair type of look.”

Diefenbach said it was an honor to be selected, but it could have just as easily been any of the neighboring businesses selected for the shot.

“They could have chosen any one of these great businesses … any one of us could have been used in that commercial.”

Rummel said crews are returning next month during Bay City’s Tall Ship Celebration to get aerial footage of the region.

Production of the commercial has a price tag of $500,000, she said. It will cost an additional $1 million for the media buy to run the commercial, radio spots and print ads in 2014 and another $1 million to run them in 2015.

The Great Lakes Bay Regional CVB and the Pure Michigan campaign are sharing the cost.

Rummel said the national advertising campaign has been a goal for some time and now the funds are available to make it happen.

“We’re very excited about it,” she said. “Individually, we could never afford to achieve this level, but now that we’ve regionalized under the Great Lakes Bay Regional banner … we’re able to afford a national advertising campaign.”

Rummel said local funding for the campaign — $1.25 million — is coming from visitors to the area.

“The funding, locally, comes 100 percent from transient visitors to the area, so no money at all comes from local taxpayers,” she said.

Transient visitors to Saginaw, Bay and Midland counties have funded this effort via a 5-percent assessment tax paid at area hotels, bed and breakfasts and other transient lodging in the three counties, Rummel explained.

Because not all of the b-roll captured will be able to be used in the 30-second TV spot, the Great Lakes Bay Regional CVB will be allowed to use the footage to produce YouTube videos and other things, she said.

Rummel said the goal of the national advertising campaign is to draw visitors who have never been to the state of Michigan or who have never been to the Great Lakes Bay Region. She said she hopes it will attract visitors from as far away as Georgia, Texas, possibly even California and Oregon.

“The absolute test of the success of this campaign will be the increase in hotel rooms sold in 2013, 2014 and 2015,” she said. “… In 2014 and 2015 look at the different license plates on the automobiles that are at the hotels … that’s a really good indicator of the success of this investment.”

Rummel asked area resident to show visitors to the region “warm hospitality so they keep coming back” and to be proud of where they live.

“We live in an outstanding part of the state of Michigan and we’re all very proud to say that we’re from Michigan’s Great Lakes Bay Region.”